On the (B)log

September 17, 2013

Welcome to Flushd!

Welcome to Flushd, where your bathroom experience matters.

Flushd helps you find a place of relief quickly and easily. Flushd transforms your in-stall experience into a more relaxing and enjoyable moment of reprieve. Flushd is here to release you - from the bonds and burdens of bad bathrooms, and help you release whatever you happen to be holding inside of you.

Let me "bottomline" it for you: Flushd makes your toilet time fun.

Flushd started as a conversation over the dinner table, about a very inappropriate dinner topic. The app was originally conceived as PottyPortal, a place to “entertain the masses sitting on their asses”. As we dove down that dark hole into the bowels of the business, we discovered that this was mostly untouched territory. We found a huge gap in bathroom appreciation and exploration on the internet - there needed to be a place to tackle potty talk in a constructive, productive, pleasurable, and professional manner. There needed to be Flushd.

I know what you must be thinking:

You: “Who in their right mind would stake their future on building a mission driven company concentrated on the crapper?” Us: "Uh. Us."

You again: “Really? An app for the asses of the masses?” Us: "Yep. Pretty much."

You again: “Seriously? A reliable source for finding clean and easily accessible bathrooms?” Us: "Yes! We give a shit about you taking a shit. Whether you call it “dropping the kids off at the pool” or “downloading some files”, our goal is to make sure an acceptable bathroom is always within reach."

You: “This must be some sort of a joke” Us: "No joke." (awkward silence)

Never before has someone seriously tackled this most ubiquitous of actions. Never before has there been a place dedicated to one of the most important advances of our time. Never before has someone tried to make the whole process productive and professional, as well as enjoyable.

This is something we all do everyday. Some of us do it multiple times a day. Some of us, like my brother-in-law the urologist and my sister the gynecologist (both Flushd Founders and Contributors), make it our whole lives. Yet, the whole process has been a conversation taboo and largely swept under the bathroom mat. We say, “No more.”

No longer will the bathroom experience remain hidden behind closed stall-doors. From now on, the toilet will be treated like a throne, and every flush will be a royal one. Flushd says let our movements start a movement. Whether its #1 or #2, Flushd's mission is pure and true. Let’s join together to make sure we all have a nice place to go pee and/or poo.

When you need us most (remember that time you couldn't find a bathroom or a changing table???), we will be there for you and you will be happy to have us in your hands.

Bathroom awesomeness can be yours and it all begins with a download. So join us.

Some quick notes on the app: We have spent a tremendous amount of time to make it fun, so please enjoy.

Read your feeds to your hearts content.

Don't be afraid to be proud of your achievements and the badges you earn and share them on Facebook and Twitter.

Rate those bathrooms so that your fellow Flushd users can benefit from your experience.

Yes, even take a pic while you are in there. As they say, a picture says a thousand words. Please though, keep it clean (while we know some people find their own poops fascinating, other people usually don't, so let's keep what comes out to ourselves). Any objectionable content will be taken down from the app.

Don’t' be surprised if you show up to a location as an early adopter and not find a restroom. Geolocation and exact bathroom location within a building is still a very inexact science. What we have done is utilize the foursquare API to bring you locations with a 90% or higher likelihood of having a restroom. That is how we solved our chicken/egg problem (how does one compile a list of restrooms without having a large base of users first?). As part of Flushd, your mission is to help us plot the world's bathrooms. We ask you to add, rate and review locations and help us build what is surely to be the world's best bathroom directory.

We believe that perfect is the enemy of good and are ardent design thinkers. This is a version 1.0. If something in the app isn't to your liking, please share your feedback with us. This is app belongs to the “peeple” and as such we will take your feedback to heart and integrate those features as we have the time and resources to do so.

Thanks for downloading and we look forward to running into you in this big beautiful world of ours...and we promise, we will have washed our hands...